Magnet schools alone may not help school districts meet diversity goals in areas where districts were released from court-ordered school desegregation plans, suggests a study published in the Education Policy Analysis Archives.

The study—conducted by researcher Emily Arcia of the Miami-Dade County Public Schools—examined that school system, a 350,000-student urban district that had been released from a court-ordered desegregation plan. The study compared enrollment statistics for magnet and nonmagnet schools in the district in the year it was released from court-ordered desegregation and four years later. The study found that within four years of the release, gains the magnet schools had made in black and white student integration had been lost.